Post 22

It's been a while! Just when I thought I wasn't going to be able to think of something to talk about ever again, I went and surprised myself. It seems so obvious now, too, and it should have been one of those things I had discussed right away.

But first, I want to give a quick update. I have a website now. The current website is temporary, but the domain name will remain the same even after my permanent site is up and running. The domain name is: www.danpomykalskiphotography.com, so be sure to add my site to your favorites. It's not much right now. Just a photo of Peyton, a way to contact me, and a very, very brief description. 

I also just had a shoot a few days ago, but am unable to share the photos until a little later. I'm very excited to share these photos with you, which will be on my flickr page: www.flickr.com/danpomykalski. I'll let you know once they're up. I'm really happy about how these turned out, and can't wait to show them.

I have a shoot this Friday, and I have high expectations for the results. I'll be sure to upload of those to my Flickr page as well once I'm done editing them. 

Now, for the actual topic of this post. 

Modern technology has made it extremely easy for almost anyone to pick up a dSLR and achieve "professional" image quality with a few presses of a shutter button, and then a few clicks of a mouse. It wasn't long ago, when being a photographer was more of a specialty, with far less Uncle Tom's with a low end dSLR shooting a wedding for free. I'm not afraid to admit that this ease of achieving decent results really attracted me to "photography," and made it much more accessible. If you're doubting what I'm saying about photography being much easier now than it was even ten years ago, take a look through Instagram. I've seen people achieve great things with a phone equipped with a decent camera and applying cheesy filters. I've also seen plenty of terrible photos on Instagram, where people try to be artistic, or try to make it look like they're a photographer, because Instagram gives one that false sense of being able to take a decent photograph. The difference between the photos that I pass over and the photos that make my mouth drop, is photos that are taken by someone who has "the eye for photography" and the photos taken by someone who doesn't.

It's hard to explain what "the eye for photography" is, exactly. I can tell when someone has it from their work, and I can tell when someone doesn't. The eye can't be taught. Someone with endless amounts of money can buy the best equipment, but their photos will still look terrible compared to someone with "the eye" working with a little point and shoot. 

So what's the point of this post? To let you know that anyone can say they're a photographer, but there are certain qualities that separate the photographers who can manage to be successful today and the photographers who are successful today who would have been successful at any point of time. The photographers who have "the eye," a knowledge of equipment and how to use their tools, and photographers who manage to create great results no matter what equipment they're using.